The Legacy (42 page)

H
enry Calcott was a lusty man, so Caroline suffered his conjugal attentions every night in the first few weeks of their wedded life. She was passive and turned her face away from him, amazed at how different lovemaking felt when undertaken with a person for whom she felt nothing. Her mind and senses completely free of passion, Caroline noticed the wet sounds enjoined by the meeting of their bodies; the fleshy, slightly fetid smell; the way her husband fought for breath, and the way his eyes crossed as he neared his climax. She tried to keep her face neutral and not let her distaste show.

Workmen appeared at Storton Manor and began to tidy the grounds and make repairs to the house, both inside and out.

“Will you be all right, if I go up to town? The men shan’t bother you?” Henry asked Caroline at breakfast, three weeks after her arrival at the manor.

“Of course they won’t bother me,” she replied calmly.

“You are more than welcome to come to town with me . . .”

“No, no, you go. I prefer to remain here and get better acquainted with . . . with the house, and . . .”

“Very well, very well. I’ll only be a week, I should think. Just a few matters of business to attend to,” Henry smiled, returning to the morning’s papers. Caroline turned to look out of the window at the overcast day.
Matters of business
, she repeated to herself. At one London ball, a thin-faced girl with platinum hair had whispered to her that Henry Calcott loved a game of poker, even though he almost always lost. Caroline did not mind as long as his habit took him to London every few weeks, and left her well alone.

The second day after his departure was a day of steady rain that hung a wet curtain around the house. The view from the window was of grays and browns and muted greens, a sludgy smear of countryside blurring through the glass. Caroline sat close to the fire in the drawing room, reading an overblown romance by a woman called Elinor Glyn. Her eyes skimmed the text and her thoughts were on the child inside her: why she could not tell how she felt about it; when she should tell Henry; and why she had not done so already. This last answer at least she knew—because it was unbearably bitter, to have to give Henry Calcott the news she had yearned, fruitlessly, to give Corin. The parlormaid, a timid girl called Estelle, interrupted her reverie with a quiet knock.

“Begging your pardon, my lady, but there’s a woman here to see you,” Estelle announced in her wispy voice.

“A woman? What woman?”

“She wouldn’t state her business, my lady, but she gave her name as Mrs. Cox. Should I show her in?”

Caroline sat mesmerized with shock. There was a long pause, in which the sound of approaching feet could be heard.

“No!” Caroline managed at last, standing up abruptly but too late, as Mrs. Cox pushed past Estelle and stood before Caroline with rainwater dripping from her hem onto the Persian rug. She fixed Caroline with a fiery eye and a determined set to her jaw. “That will be all, thank you, Estelle,” Caroline whispered.

Mrs. Cox looked immense but as she unbuttoned her raincoat the reason for this became clear. William was asleep, safely warm and dry beneath the coat, in a sling the woman had fashioned from a length of cotton canvas.

“I don’t know what you mean by it!” Mrs. Cox exclaimed at last, when it became clear that Caroline was lost for words. “Leaving the child with me all these many weeks . . . I don’t know what you can mean by it!”

“I . . .” But Caroline had no answer to give. Her careful neutrality, her passive acceptance of her fate, had written William out of the script. She had distanced herself from all thoughts of him, all responsibility. Seeing him again, waking up now as light and fresh air reached him, gave her a feeling like a blow to the stomach, a hard spike of love that was riddled with guilt and fear. “How did you find me?” was all she could think to ask.

“It wasn’t that hard, not with news of your wedding published in all the papers. I waited a bit longer, thinking you’d wanted the child kept safe and quiet while you got wed, but then I saw you weren’t going to come for him at all! You weren’t, were you? And him such a good, healthy boy . . . I don’t know what you mean by it!” Mrs. Cox repeated, her voice growing thick. She took a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “And now I’ve had the expense of bringing him here on the train, and the trouble of walking him here through all this rain without him catching his death . . .”

“I can pay you. For the train, and . . . for the time you’ve had him. I can pay you more than that, even—here!” Caroline rushed to the dresser, withdrawing a purse of coins and holding it out to the woman. “Will you keep him?” she asked suddenly, fear making her voice shake. Mrs. Cox stared at her.

“
Keep him?
What can you mean? I’m not running a baby farm, I’ll have you know! You’re his mother—a child belongs with its mother. And look at the life he’ll have here!” She gestured at the grand surroundings. “I’ve enough mouths to feed and enough bodies to find beds for without taking on another one!” The woman seemed distraught. Caroline could only stand and stare in desperation as Mrs. Cox began to work at the knot holding the sling around her shoulders. “Here. I’ve brought him back to you now. Fit and well. All his things are in this bag—all but the carrier, for which he has grown too big, and I could not carry it as well as him to come down here. I . . . I hope you’ll love him, ma’am. He’s a good boy and he deserves to have a mother’s love . . .” She seated William on the red silk cushion of a winged armchair. He held his arms up to her and smiled. “No, lovey, you’re staying with your real mam now,” she told him, her eyes again filling with tears. Now that it came to leaving him, Mrs. Cox hesitated. She looked from William to Caroline and back again, and then her face creased in anguish and she knotted her hands in the folds of her skirts. “Take good care of your boy, Lady Calcott,” she said, and hurried away. William sat quietly for a minute, his eyes darting around the room from one unfamiliar object to another. Then he began to cry.

Frantic to hide him, Caroline scooped William up and went quickly via the back stairs to her bedroom. She put him down on the bed and stepped back, clasping her hands to the sides of her head, trying to still her thoughts, and her heart, which was clattering far too fast in her chest. Her breathing came in short, panicked snatches. Quickly, she found a pacifier in William’s bag of things and gave it to him to distract him. He stopped crying and grasped at the familiar, tinkling object, making small conversational noises to himself. Gradually, Caroline calmed down. He had grown so much! But then, he was a year and a half old now. His skin was darker and his hair was thicker. His face was beginning to show the high, slanting cheeks and straight brows of the Ponca. How could she ever have thought he was Corin’s child? William was Indian, through and through; it would have been obvious even if she had not come to realize that her failure to give Corin a child had more to do with Corin than with herself. Which meant that she had stolen Joe and Magpie’s baby. The enormity of this heinous crime hit Caroline like a poleaxe, and she sank to the floor, cramming a fist into her mouth to stifle uncontrollable sobs that surged up from her stomach and near strangled her. And she could not undo this terrible thing. There was no redress she could offer to Magpie—kind, gentle Magpie, who had been nothing but loyal and friendly, who was missing her child thousands of miles from where he now lay. Thousands of miles that neither she nor William would ever traverse again. It was another world, another lifetime. In bringing him here she had crossed a one-way boundary. In that moment, Caroline did not know how she was going to live with what she had done. She sat slumped on the carpet, and she wished to die.

Half an hour later, the maids and the housekeeper, Mrs. Priddy, saw Lady Calcott struggling across the waterlogged lawn, carrying something heavy in what looked like a cloth bag. They called after her, and wondered whether to accompany her and make sure she was well, but if Lady Calcott heard them she showed no signs of pausing. She vanished with her burden into the trees at the furthest edge of the gardens, and when she appeared again, pale and shivering, at the mudroom door, she was without it.

“What a day for a walk, my lady!” Mrs. Priddy exclaimed, as they found clean towels for her and unlaced her muddy boots. In truth it was a mild day, beneath those soggy English clouds, and certainly not cold enough to have brought on the storms of shuddering that wracked their new mistress’s frail body. “Let’s get you up to your room. Cass will bring you some hot tea, won’t you, Cass?” Mrs. Priddy addressed the chambermaid, a girl of fifteen who goggled at Caroline with round, green eyes. If any of the staff thought anything more of Mrs. Cox’s short visit, Caroline’s walk in the rain or the pillowcase missing from the bed, they knew better than to say anything about it. All except Cass Evans, that was, who whispered things late at night to Estelle, up in the small room on the top floor that they shared.

C
aroline kept to her bed for several days. She lay in a state of dread and sorrow, which deepened when she slid her hand beneath her pillow and found William’s pacifier there. The one she had given him, to quieten him as he lay on the bed; the one she and Corin had presented to him as a welcoming gift. She ran her fingers around the silken ivory, cradled the silver bell gently in her hand. She ought to get rid of it, she knew. She ought not to have anything in her possession that could link her to the child, to any child. But she could not. As if some essence of William, of Magpie, of life and love, remained caught up in that one precious talisman, she clasped it tightly in her fists and held it close to her heart. And when Lord Calcott returned from London with an empty wallet, she finally delivered the news of her delicate condition with an expressionless face and a calm demeanor.

T
he tinker family did not move on, as Caroline had assumed they would; as she had prayed they would. Instead, a few days later, they brought William to the door, to ask politely if anybody in the household had any idea to whom the child belonged, since their inquiries in the village had proved fruitless. Caroline saw them coming along the driveway from her position at the drawing room window. Her heart squeezed fearfully in her chest—just as it had when Corin had first told her she had Indian neighbors—and she jumped up to flee before realizing that there was nowhere to go. She waited as the butler opened the front door, heard muffled words spoken, then the approach of footsteps and a subtle knock.

“Yes?” she called, her voice wavering.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, my lady, but Mr. Dinsdale and his wife say they have found a child in the woods and they wonder if we have any idea to whom it might belong or what they ought to do with it?” The butler, Mr. March, sounded puzzled, as if the etiquette surrounding lost babies was new to him. Feeling like she was going to be sick, Caroline turned on the man.

“What can that
possibly
have to do with me?” she demanded coldly.

“Yes, my lady,” Mr. March intoned, every bit as coldly, making the slightest of bows as he withdrew. So the Dinsdales went away again, still carrying William and casting looks back at the house over their shoulders, as if bewildered by their dismissal. Caroline watched them go with increasing unease and a rush of blood to her head that dizzied her, and she traced this feeling to the way Mr. March had referred to them—
Mr. Dinsdale and his wife.
As if he knew them.

“Dinsdale? Ah, you’ve met our young campers, have you?” Henry exclaimed when Caroline asked him about the tinkers. She put down her knife and fork, her throat too tight to swallow. “Harmless folk. Now, I know it may seem a little out of the ordinary, but I’ve given them permission to stay on that stretch of land—”

“What? Why would you do that?” Caroline gasped.

“Robbie Dinsdale saved my life in Africa, my dear—at Spion Kop, some years ago. Were it not for him, I would not be here today!” Henry announced dramatically, putting a huge forkful of potatoes
dauphinoise
into his mouth. A drop of hot cream ran down his chin, and Caroline looked away.

“But . . . they are
gypsies
. Thieves and . . . and probably worse! We
cannot
have them as our neighbors!”

“Now, my dear, I
will
not have that, I’m afraid. Private Dinsdale stayed with me in our pitiful trench when I was shot, and defended my prone body against a dozen Boer snipers until the Twin Peaks were taken and the buggers pulled back!” Henry waved his knife emphatically. “He was wounded himself, and half dead with thirst, but by my side he stayed, when he could have run. All that was left of the rest of my men was a bloody mess like a scene from hell. The war changed him, though . . . He was eventually discharged on medical grounds, although they never did settle on what was wrong with the chap. Lost a few of his marbles out there, I would say. One day he just stopped talking, stopped eating, and wouldn’t get up from his bunk no matter who ordered him to. I had to step in with a good word for the fellow. He’s much improved now, but he was never quite able to fit back in to his civilian life. He was apprentice farrier in the village here, but that soon finished. He couldn’t pay the rent and was thrown out of his cottage, so he took to the road. I told him he could stay here as long as he made no trouble, and he never has done. So here they stay.” Henry wiped potato from his moustache with a crisp, white napkin. Caroline studied her plate, fidgeting nervously.